


Four Times Neal Got Sick, And One time it was Okay

by kriadydragon



Category: White Collar
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-26
Updated: 2011-04-26
Packaged: 2017-10-18 16:39:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/190983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kriadydragon/pseuds/kriadydragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AS the title says, four times Neal got sick and one time it was okay, Written for Sahiya for Help_Japan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Times Neal Got Sick, And One time it was Okay

_”Mom?”_

 _No one answered. The house was quiet, so quiet that it made Neal's ears hurt. But everything hurt. Just walking down the hall into the living room and kitchen had made his legs hurt. He hated being sick._

 _“Mom?” he tried again._

 _What he really hated about being sick was how hard it was to think. If Mom were home, then the TV would be on. Duh. It was two o'clock, way too early for Mom to be home from work._

 _Neal shuffled barefoot into the kitchen to the fridge, intent on some orange juice, and found the note reminding him to take the Tylenol sitting on the counter whether it tasted bad or not. Only two Tylenol only, no more, no less. The bottle had even been left open since at only eight Neal had yet to master the child proof cap. He could read at a sixth-grade level, cook soup in a sauce pan, use the dishwasher, but couldn't get one stupid bottle cap off. It was embarrassing._

 _Neal got the OJ from the fridge and a glass from the dishwasher, carrying both to the counter. The orange juice carton was getting easier to carry, which meant they were going to need more. After he filled the glass and took a quick sip to wash down the Tylenol, he went to the dry erase board by the phone and added Orange Juice to the growing list in his all-capital letter scrawl. He really hoped Mom wasn't too tired to go to the store. They were out of soup, and Neal was getting tired of eating only cereal._

 _Grabbing his glass, Neal padded tiredly to the living room and the couch. He usually preferred reading to TV, but reading made his head hurt worse, and he hated how quiet it was. When it was this quiet, he usually didn't stick around, going outside to play or take a walk, filling his ears with the distant rush of traffic, the squeals of children and someone's dog barking. Then it wasn't so bad._

 _When there was noise, he didn't feel so alone._

\-----------------

There was a reason people didn't like making doctor's appointments. Number one, the waiting; number two, even more waiting; three, cold stethoscopes; four, being manhandled by bony fingers in rubber gloves; five, _needles_ ; And, finally, six, being told a little too cheerfully what you already knew – that it may not feel like it, but you'll live.

Neal hadn't wanted to go to the doctor's, but his chest had ached abominably and it had made him nervous enough to tell Peter about it. All he had wanted was an answer, whether gruff or otherwise, reassuring and reminding him that chest pains were merely the nature of colds, and that Neal just needed to cowboy up and deal with it. Neal guessed he must have been knuckling his sternum a little too hard and too often. Peter's response had been a no argument, “I'm making you a doctor's appointment. If I don't see your location right smack on the address of your physician then I'm hunting you down and dragging you there myself.”

Which Neal doubted Peter realized was actually a step up from their usual deal, in which Peter would drag Neal there, anyway, just to make sure he went. Neal would have loved nothing more than to see this freedom to visit the doctor all by himself as a matter of trust, and maybe it was, but neither could Neal fool himself. He knew what he could be like when sick. Mozzie and Kate had complained often enough and those complaints, eventually, had been duly noted. But that even Peter had backed off and given Neal his space said twice as much.

So Neal was a grouch when he was sick. So what? So was Peter who'd been a bear when he'd that bad case of the flu. So was Elizabeth when she'd suffered through that stomach bug. So was Mozzie, who panicked if he suffered so much as an infected hangnail.

“It's different with you,” Peter had said. “It's just... I don't know... _more_. I can't really explain it.” In other words, it wasn't different with Neal, Peter just wanted to justify his complaints.

But at least it had meant him making it to the appointment like an adult rather than a child in desperate need of supervision. As Neal headed out the door into the cool spring air, he stuffed the prescription note the doctor had scribbled for him into the pocket of his leather jacket, recriminated himself - _widdle Nealy is growing up_ \- and smiled. Then coughed into his elbow, eying wearily the sidewalk once so small and simple when he had first arrived, now impossibly long before it turned to take him back to the street where he could flag down a cab. He rubbed at his throbbing chest as soon as the cough ended and allowed him the use of his hand.

Neal being told he had bronchitis was new, but that he had to wait for it to take care of itself - no antibiotics to speed up the process, only lots of rest and plenty of fluids - wasn't. One to two weeks was what he was looking at, which would make it a grand total of three to four weeks that he hadn't been healthy. And he was doing undercover work, too far in and gaining too much ground to back out now. Neal couldn't remember if it was fate that usually had the twisted sense of humor or irony. Either way, the timing was crappy, and complaining would only earn him another “cowboy up, Neal.”

Neal turned the corner, walking parallel to the street currently devoid of cabs. He coughed hard enough that he felt like he was bringing up a lung, the effort doubling him over until he thought he might fall. Nothing brought out the true nature of strangers quite like an illness, the people sharing the sidewalk with him practically stepping into the street to give him as much space as possible. One lady went so far as to sneer at him before covering her face with a handkerchief. Neal just gave her as much of a charming smile as he could – it always paid to be the better person. He didn't have to see the smile to know it came out as a grimace.

He hated being sick. Granted, who didn't. But everyone had their individual reasons that went beyond the aches, pains and general malaise. Nobody liked how badly an illness limited you.

Neal kept walking, ignoring the people trying to avoid him. A black van tore around the corner in a scream of rubber on asphalt.

What sickness limited most was your awareness. By the time Neal realized that these might not be teenagers trying to pop a wheely, the van came to a screeching halt. The door slid open before his brain could process that now would probably be a good time for him to _run_. Men in black and ski masks piled out, one throwing a bag over Neal's head, another cuffing his hands behind his back, another shoving him roughly into the van. By the time Neal started to panic, it was too late.

Somewhere within the melee of his terrified bewilderment, Neal decided it was irony that had the twisted sense of humor.

\----------------------

 _Neal may have been twenty but he felt like he was going on seventy. His knees ached, his back ached and a pressure headache had pooled at the base of his skull. But all three complaints had nothing on his stomach, currently churning and boiling like a volcano about to go off._

 _He'd already puked once, all over his shirt and barely missed the replica Mr. Morris was having him paint. It would have only served the old bastard right had Neal been standing two inches closer at the moment of expulsion, but it also would have been his paycheck covering the damages and he needed every cent. Besides, at least Morris had gotten it through his thick bald head that keeping sick people around wasn't a good idea. He'd had no choice but to send Neal home early._

 _Neal walked slowly to keep his stomach as calm as possible, with one hand clenching his gut as though it actually made a difference. It didn't, and one block away from home Neal puked for the second time, soiling his already soiled shirt._

 _But he finished off the distance, dragged his exhausted carcass up two flights of stairs, fumbled his key into the lock and stumbled inside, shedding jacket and shirt en route to the bathroom. He wiped his skin clean with a wet cloth that seemed to weigh a ton in his shaking hand. A shower would have been better but right now the mere act of standing was sucking more from him than he had. Neal staggered from the bathroom to his bedroom, and dropped chest first and shirtless on top of the covers._

 _Five minutes later, he was startled from his light doze by the slam of the door and the puberty-cracked bellowing that his room-mate Jimmy called singing. Jimmy was in a band. The guy couldn't carry a tune to save his life, and he was in a _band_ , on drums and _back-up vocals_. Neal winced at the broken yowling coupled with the tap, pop and crack of Jimmy's drum sticks hitting whatever they could find._

“Hey, Neal!” Jimmy crowed.

Neal grimaced, but any chance he had of pretending he was asleep and hoping Jimmy would go away was ruined when the tip of Jimmy's drumstick skittered across Neal's ribs like they were the keys of a xylophone, ending with a light tap on Neal's shoulder. Neal was unable to help his violent flinch of alarm.

“You look like crap, kid,” Jimmy said. Neal cracked an eye open and glared at Jimmy's bald head with its Mohawk crown of blue and red. Jimmy was all noise, both audibly and visually; drumsticks always tapping, metal jingling, leather creaking and heavy boots stomping. He was wearing a blazing bright tie-die shirt with a skull and crossbones on it, and all that color was pushing the pain in Neal's skull until he was sure his head was going to pop.

“I won't keep you. Just need to borrow some money,” Jimmy said quickly, reaching into Neal's pants pocket for his wallet. “Don't worry, I'll pay you back. Don't I always?”

Neal opened his mouth to say no, you don't.

“I will this time,” Jimmy cut him off, tossing the now empty wallet onto Neal's bare back. “Promise. See ya, kid.” With that, Jimmy sauntered off, taking his noise with him and leaving Neal to his misery.

But the joke was on Jimmy. Tucked safely away in savings was the bulk of Neal's money, half for daily expenses, the rest for his ticket out of here. A few more years, a few more jobs, and Jimmy and his drum sticks would be a distant nightmare.

\---------------------

Peter had once asked Neal what would happen if – allegedly – he got sick before a job. Neal had replied, shrugging, “Depends on how sick you were, I'd imagine.” It also depended on the job. There was a reason Neal swam laps, took vitamins and ate healthy, and little of it had to do with keeping his figure. Even a runny nose could be hazardous to a heist, with a cough a reason enough to back out of a job. It had only ever happened once to Neal, malaria costing him a job in Africa, and to this day he continued to lament what could have been.

But for a con, it all came down to the mark, and as long as the mark wasn't a germ-a-phobe, being sick could be gold. People pitied the sick. Pitied them and underestimated them.

Unless they were smart. Unless they caught on. Then they used it, and gold turned to dust in your hands. Sickness was only an advantage when you knew how to use it but that didn't make it any less of a gamble.

And the aftermath... it wasn't worth the aftermath, when the job was done and the only certainty was that someone was coming after you – maybe the cops, maybe the mark, maybe someone else. Illness was the gamble you didn't take unless you absolutely had to, because it always found a way to get you to fold.

Like now; the canvas bag stinking of something old and stale forcing Neal to compensate for the lack of oxygen by panting, the panting making him cough and lose more oxygen, the lost oxygen making him pant even faster - a never ending cycle of suffocation. His lungs burned and his heart pounded, pushing his blood like one continuous peel of thunder through his ears. He couldn't see, couldn't think, couldn't _breathe_ , sending mixed signals to his brain to fight, to flee, to do _something_ before he died.

“Hey, this guy's starting to freak out.”

“Relax, pal, we're not going to kill you, we just want to ask some questions.”

“I think he can't breathe”

“He's suffocating man!”

“Leave the hood alone!”

“Chill. I'm not taking it off.”

Then the course material was off his mouth and nose, his lips caressed by cool air that he gulped in greedy lungful after greedy lungful, exhaling it in a coughing fit that made his ribs feel like they had sprung free from his breast bone. Saliva flecked his chin, sliding down it in strings. He could also feel himself shaking, the bad shakes that you couldn't even begin to control, spawn of that potent mix of fear, adrenaline and exhaustion, muscles going tight and making curl like a shriveled leaf as much as the van seat would let him.

“Better?”

Neal nodded, while behind him his trembling right hand wriggled desperately between the small of his back and the seat's vinyl. Little by little, it inched out of the cuff then popped free – chafe, sore, but free. There was also a reason he stretched more than was probably necessary. He might not have been flexible by gymnastic standards, but he was limber, and being limber always came in handy. It also didn't hurt that these people had no clue how to properly close a pair of cuffs.

Someone snickered, “Pussy.” Others joined in, but it was cut short by an all-too familiar high-pitched beep.

“What the hell?”

“What is that?”

“What...”

Someone lifted Neal's pant leg. “Son of a... Bastard's wired!”

“Cut it, now!”

“Toss it out!”

Neal tensed. He heard shifting, shuffling, felt the cold blade of a knife slide between the anklet strap and his skin. A snikt and the anklet beeped a second time.

“Toss it!”

The handle of the van door clicked.

Neal moved, launching himself towards the sound of the van door rolling open. He might not have been a fighter but that didn't make him a stranger to self-defense. One-on-one was a risk, but with a group came an advantage – all those people, all those limbs and voices, all that motion, and all of it crammed into a moving space with an open door. Neal ripped off his hood and lunged forward, shoving and elbowing stunned kidnappers aside as he threw himself towards freedom. As he'd predicted, the alarmed driver began to slow, and Neal jumped. The landing was hard and messy skinning both knees and the palms of his hands, then he was up and running taking the first turn into the nearest alley.

Neal kept fit for this very reason, to run and keep running. The alley ended at a chain link fence, easier to scale than a wooden one. Two leaps, one on the fence and one up, and he was over and off again, his kidnappers still nothing more than pounding footfalls behind him.

But sickness was a backstabbing bastard, constricting his chest, every breath like steel wool scraping his throat and lungs, louder than the roar of his blood. He turned a corner and stumbled giving his kidnappers time to catch up. Ironic, because that's what this run was about – not escape, but time.

Time that was running out, his lungs demanding more air but unable to get more. He slowed, stumbled more, catching himself on whatever he could and pushing off from it to keep going. He wasn't going to make it.

 _Please, Peter, please be watching me._

A weight like a brick house slammed him chest first against a trash bin. Whatever air was left in his shrunken lungs was shoved out, and trying to take more in when his body remembered how was three times the agony.

“Got you, you little bastard,” Brick House sneered in his ear, yanking his hands behind his back. He had to be hauled the long way to the van, Brick House cussing him out and promising him pain as soon as possible.

It was an empty threat. They weren't even out of the alley they were in, weren't anywhere near the street, when they heard the wail of sirens.

Neal never thought the day would come when he would love that sound. But irony was funny like that.

\----------------------

 _“Just tell me where it is, Caffrey, and I'll leave you alone.”_

 _Even if Neal did want to tell him, Mike's meaty hand around the back of his neck, pressing him into the bed, was making it kind of hard to say anything. Having a raw throat didn't help. His voice had been little more than a squeak at best, non-existent at worse. But Mike was persistent, and an idiot, and Neal didn't have anything shiny to distract him._

 _Mike sighed, “Damn it, kid, I'm trying to be reasonable, here.” He dragged Neal from the warm cocoon of the cheap motel bed and slammed him shoulder first into the wall. “Just tell me where you stashed my money.”_

 _Neal cringed, shrinking back on instinct away from the two-hundred pound jackass trying to shove him through the wall. The loss of control was embarrassing, but he was aching, cold, having made the mistake of shucking his shirt because only moments ago he'd been sweltering. As much as he would have loved to stand tall, brave and pretend he had nothing to lose, his weakened body and stuffed-up head couldn't comply._

 _Mike pulled Neal back and slammed him again, this time back first, knocking the air from Neal on a wet cough._

 _“My money...” Neal wheezed, “Won it... fair and square.”_

 _“Yeah?” Mike said, face looming close, robbing Neal of more air with his fish-rank breath. The guy sure loved his sea food. “Think I didn't see you slip that card into your hand?”_

 _Neal choked on a laugh. Later he would blame it on being punch drunk when he replied, “Wow, didn't know... guys like you... were smart enough... to spot... something like that.”_

 _Mike sneered, and in typical Mike fashion, he threw Neal's smaller body across the room right into the opposite wall. Neal crumpled in a pained, coughing heap, and braced himself for further abuse. Mike didn't disappoint, kicking Neal in the spine before stomping out the door._

 _Thank goodness for couples too drunk to find their room but not too drunk to call 911 and save the bruised young man writhing and gasping on the floor. And thank goodness for guys too hot headed to check the room they stomped away from – specifically under the bed. Neal had more than enough to leave Seattle and get back to the safety of New York. It had been a bust, anyway. He'd missed Kate by two days._

\---------------------

Ten feet from the van, and they were surrounded.

“Police! Down on the ground! Hands up!”

Brick House easily obeyed. Neal wanted to do the same, but his chest was hurting to the point that it was robbing him of rational thought, the pain skittering down his ribs making it harder to breathe. But he tried, his hands shaking and unable to go past his shoulders without making his sides cramp. Coughing was like being punched in the flank with brass knuckles.

The police man cuffing him asked coolly, “You all right? You're shaking like a leaf, pal.”

Neal, finding it difficult to talk, could only shake his head. But he didn't even have to do that much, his wheezy breaths and lack of strength bringing him to his knees said enough. He swallowed, wincing at how mere saliva felt like acid to his throat. He was so thirsty, so tired. He just wanted to be able to breathe.

“Hey, hold up, Officer, I'll take him.”

Neal's breath caught, and for one thankfully fleeting moment he thought he might cry.

Peter. That was Peter. Peter was here. Peter had found him.

“Damn it, Neal,” Peter said, crouching down and unlocking the cuffs. “I told you to go to the doctor not... whatever this was.”

“Kidnapping?”

Peter paused to give Neal a bewildered look, then he continued, and the cuffs fell away. “Of course. Only you could make going to the doctor something that ends up raising my blood pressure. Can you get up?”

Neal nodded, but he hadn't fully registered the question to realize it was a bad idea. He was halfway up, Peter helping him with a grip on his arm, when he lost all control of his legs. He stumbled, and it was only thanks to a nearby wall that he didn't do a face-plant on the asphalt.

“Neal?” Peter asked, all exasperation and authority gone, leaving only concern.

“Little dizzy,” Neal confessed. “Kind of hard to breathe.”

Which was also turned out to be a bad idea as Peter bellowed at the top of his voice for an ambulance, Neal wincing away from the blast of noise to his ear drums. Peter lowered him to the ground, telling him to relax, to focus on breathing.

“You'll be all right, Neal,” Peter promised. In the distance, they could hear the wail of the ambulance heading their way.

\-------------------

 _The problem with getting caught between two guys who wanted to kill each other was that you ended up as collateral damage and didn't even know it._

 _Shivs weren't the product of Hollywood exacerbated cliches; they existed. The problem wasn't so much making one but making one that was small enough to hide but big enough to do its job. Neal learned this the hard way when Jeff Collier finally had enough of Jake Sanford and lunged at him in the dinner line. It might have been a clean hit if Neal hadn't been in the way, but then Jeff, for all his intelligence, wasn't too bright when pissed. Neal managed to slip out but the damage had been done. Getting away from a fight didn't make you any less culpable in the eyes of a guard, and Neal's dinner was eaten in solitary._

 _But even guards could admit when they were wrong. Not out loud, more through action, like letting Neal sleep in his own cell four hours later._

 _Neal woke feeling like a pile of used up and wrung out dishrags, his heart pounding, his skin clammy, and the temperature skirting uncomfortably close to the hundreds. He sat up with a groan, only for the world to drop out from under him, sending him back to his flat pillow. He tried again – better to try than to give the guards another reason to send him to solitary. It was touch and go, his body fighting to stay upright and the world trying to drop him. But he made it, he was upright, and would have pumped his fist in weak triumph but needed his hands to brace himself on whatever he could find until the dizziness past. He shuffled from the sink to the wall, from the wall to the open door of his cell, and from his cell to the hall where there was nothing to grab onto except whoever was passing by._

 _“Whoever” happened to be a guard. Not just any guard but Sal, skittish as a cat caught in a wire and just as reactive. One moment Neal was stumbling, reaching out for something to hold onto, the next he was sprawled on the floor, an hysterical Sal looming over him, screaming that if Neal so much as twitched wrong he was breaking every damn bone in his damn body you little bastard._

 _“Sorry,” Neal croaked, tensing for the promised beating even if it was a load of crap. Sal was all talk, no walk, but Neal couldn't help it. Life had taught him that where there was verbal abuse administered at the top of someone's lungs, there always followed something physical._

 _“Get up! Get up, damn it!”_

 _“Sal, man, lay off, I think there's something wrong.” Bobby. Good old Bobby. Had Neal been able to move he would have crawled across the floor and hugged Bobby's legs (because standing was officially out of the question). The medic was contacted, Neal soon loaded onto a gurney and wheeled to the prison infirmary. Dignity was sacrificed for health care when his jump suit then t-shirt were removed._

 _“Caffrey, damn it, why the hell didn't you get this checked?” Doc Stine growled._

 _Neal blinked, “Wha?” and twisted his head as much as his neck would let him. His eyes widened at a line of dried blood running diagonal across his lower back, from hip to lumbar, thin enough to miss in the fracas of trying not to get shanked, but angry red and puffed up._

 _“Explains why my back itched.”_

 _Stine, pouring alcohol onto a cotton swab, glanced up long enough to give Neal a withering look._

 _Neal shrank back contritely. “I didn't know, doc, I swear.”_

 _“Uh-huh,” Stine said tightly, which meant he didn't buy it. And that sucked, because Neal was telling the truth. But Stine wasn't in the habit of giving anyone the benefit of the doubt, whether you were one of the guys in orange or one of the guys in blue. To Stine, anything bad that happened to you was always your own fault._

 _Stine swabbed Neal's cut with what Neal felt was more force than necessary, telling Neal to suck it up whenever he hissed and writhed. By the time he was done, Neal was shaking and gripping the sheets until his knuckles blanched._

 _“I'm giving you an IV of fluids and antibiotics,” Stine said, grabbing Neal's hand and inserting the needle. “Next time someone comes at you with a sharp pointy object, I suggest you get out of the way.” He covered Neal with a top sheet and left him to soak up the bag full of saline and other goodies._

 _The infirmary smelled, like chemicals and old sweat, giving Neal's stomach cause to rebel. Then it did rebel, dumping last night's digested dinner all over the floor._

 _“Well that's just awesome!” Stine sneered, slamming packages of gauze onto a metal tray. Once again, Neal was berated for what couldn't be helped._

\-----------------

Neal stayed overnight in the hospital under observation. The verdict was that he would live, the stress, the chase and diminished lung strength due to Bronchitis having burned him out to the point of collapse. Neal was too exhausted to argue but that didn't mean he didn't want to. Hospitals could be oddly contradictory, telling you to rest only to wake you every couple of hours. Morning came, and he was still just as tired as when he'd been admitted, and didn't mind having to be wheeled to the entrance by a nurse rather than go out on his own steam. He had no steam left.

Peter met them half way, probably having just arrived. He smiled at Neal. “Ready?”

When Neal only nodded, Peter's smile became compressed lips and a curiously raised eyebrow. He led the way quietly to the car.

Once bundled up and tucked safely in the passenger's seat, Neal assumed the next stop would be home. So it took his tired and stuffed-up head a while to register that they were going the wrong way.

“Peter?”

“We're going to my house,” Peter said. He smirked wryly. “Better to keep an eye on you.”

Neal frowned and narrowed his eyes, annoyed. “I didn't run, Peter.”

Peter blinked. “What? No. Keep an eye on you as in make sure you get plenty of fluids, plenty of rest--”

“I was. You don't need to watch me, Peter. I can do fine on my own.”

“I don't doubt that. It's a selfish peace of mind thing, okay? Just humor me. If you don't like it I swear I'll take you home.”

Neal shrugged, because at this point all he wanted was a bed and some quiet, it didn't matter where.

As they drove, Peter filled Neal in on the parts of his kidnapping he'd missed due to being mostly passed out in a hospital bed. The guys who took Neal were body guards, employed to look mean and shred damning money laundering documents, not kidnap. Apparently, some of those damning documents had gone missing, and Neal, the “new kid” on the block, had been the target of the company's suspicions.

“Turns out the document wasn't taken, just misplaced,” Peter said, grinning. “We found it in one of their filing cabinets under the wrong code. Between the kidnapping and that document, I think we can call this case closed.”

“Mm-hm,” was all Neal had the energy to say. He coughed, bringing his hand to his cramping chest. The doctor had assured him that his ribs were bruised, not broken, but each cough made Neal want to beg to differ.

Peter pulled up to the house and bundled Neal inside to the guest room. He had him sit on the edge of the bed while he went to get the bag he'd packed for Neal before coming to pick him up. Inside were his pajamas, and sweats and a T-shirt for when he got tired of pajamas. For a moment, Neal's chest tightened for reasons other than Bronchitis.

“Thanks, Peter.”

Peter clapped him on the shoulder. “Like I was going to make you suffer wearing my hand me downs. You can pay me back by showering. No offense but you're kind of ripe, there, bud.”

Neal more than gladly complied and Peter left him to it. He was less glad when standing for only five minutes was more than his body could take. But to take a bath risked falling asleep in the bathtub, and no way was he dealing with Peter seeing him passed out _and_ naked. Some kinds of dignity loss just weren't worth it.

Dried and dressed and warm beneath the duvet of the guest bed, Neal dozed to the muted sounds of Peter whipping up his famous pot roast. It was a light doze, placing Neal in that warped reality between dreaming and awake, where reality became the dream and the dream felt like reality. He heard a door creak, saw a man dressed in black, face covered, ease into the room, hand reaching for him. He spoke, and though the words made no sense, the voice sounded just like Mike's the day he'd come for his money.

Neal flinched back, scrabbling to get away. He was almost to the edge of the bed when gloved hands caught him by the arms and pulled him back. Neal bucked, struggled, then coughed, and coughed and coughed, long, hard and like a knife to his ribs. He was pulled upright with one hand still gripping his arm but the other rubbing his back up and down.

“Easy, Neal! Easy! It's just me, Peter. Come on, bud, wake up. It's just me.”

Neal did wake up and stopped struggling, cough after cough still ripping from his chest, spraying his chin and his hands fisted in the duvet with spittle.

“Easy Neal,” Peter soothed. “Easy. It'll pass. Just try to take a breath when you can. I know it hurts but it'll be over soon.”

And it did pass, Neal finally able to take a ragged breath. He slumped against Peter, too spent and trembling too hard to even try to stay upright. Peter was warm against his side, his large hand warm on his back, the motions giving him the needed rhythm to breathe to. He knew he should feel embarrassed, that here he was, so weak and helpless he had to use the FBI agent who had caught him as a means to keep from dropping to the floor. But right now, in the moment, he didn't care. It was too nice, knowing someone was there to catch him; _having_ someone there to catch him.

“You okay?” Peter asked gently.

Neal nodded against his chest.

“Okay. I'm going to help you back down on the bed. I'm heating you up some soup and it should be ready soon. Once you eat you can take your pills.”

“Pills?”

“Yeah. With all the excitement yesterday your prescription was almost forgotten. I found it in your jacket. Soup, OJ and an anti-inflammatory – the dinner of champions.”

Neal chuffed, then coughed, but not as bad as before. Peter helped ease him onto his side then covered him up.

“El will be home soon, so prepare yourself to be mothered.”

Neal chuffed again, coughed again, and wheezed, “Peter, seriously, stop making me laugh.”

Peter patted his shoulder.” Sorry.” But Neal could hear the smile in his voice. “Need anything, just holler. In may not seem like it but sound carries good down those stairs.”

Neal felt the bed shift when Peter's weight was removed. He watched as Peter moved toward the door.

“Hey... Peter?”

Peter stopped and turned.

“Thank you.”

Peter gave him a thumbs up, “No problem.” He left, but it wasn't long before Neal could hear the gentle murmur of the TV, followed by the door opening and El's sugar-sweet greeting for an excited Satchmo.

No one liked being sick but, for now, for Neal, he was kind of okay with it.

The end


End file.
